The question on most authors mind is, am I promoting too much or too little? Will tweeps hate me if I tweet about my books to much? How many posts a week can I put on facebook about my work before people get annoyed?

I wish I had the answer to this. When it comes to twitter, I think as along are you aren't just a promo tweeter, you're good. Seriously, something you tweeted twenty minutes ago, most likely will not be seen by someone who logs in right now. Not unless they go to your profile. Twitter is fast paced. Most weeks, I get on tweet deck and schedule some book related tweets to go out twice a day. There are times I get carried away and do this for several books a day and get worried it is too much. I will become that tweeter we all have in our streams. And I like to think that my other clever tweets during the day will make up for it. Who knows? I'm sure I annoy someone. But, this isn't a weekly thing either. I forget...a lot to schedule tweets. Though, when I do remember, I see sales.

Which brings me to this point. My income currently is to sell my books. I don't have a day job. The only income I contribute to my family is from the sales of my books. So, why wouldn't I push it some? If I don't, the husband will be kicking me out soon to get a 'real' job as he calls it.

We just need to be conscious as to how much promoting we do. Let's be honest, tweeting every hour on the dot about your book is to much. Tweeting in the morning or evening to reach readers when they are home, not a problem. If you have say, ten books out, don't tweet each day about them. Now when it comes to facebook, its different. Honestly, I don't do to much promo on there, except when my books first release to let readers know. Facebook is a whole other world from twitter. No one likes their stream flooded with multiple posts from the same person. My opinion, keep it fresh on facebook. Got a giveaway going on, mention it in the beginning and a reminder before it ends.

I am no promo expert at all. I am leaning day by day. But, this was on my mind today. So, I just though I would share my two cents. Sell your books, just don't over sell yourself.

Lacey, you're doing perfectly on promotion. In fact, you could do more. We totally agree with you. We can't stand the authors who do nothing but automated tweets about their book and no live tweeting at all. Or those who DM you immediately the second you follow them. Your tweets are great and we enjoy reading them. If you get great followers, they will do some promoting for you, leaving you free to be a human on Twitter, not a book machine.

The $64,000 question: how much is too much? I think I'm typical in that I worry that I overdue it. But I think (hope) it's balanced by my nonpromo tweets.

Promoting gets more complicated when you have multiple books. When your first book is published you think, "Gee, if I had more books, people wouldn't get sick of seeing the same one." But then when you have several, you can't give them all the attention they deserve or you will overload your followers.

I value my relationships with other authors. I've learned so much from them, I enjoy talking shop and interacting. But here's the BUT: authors aren't my audience. Not my primary one. When I'm promoting, my mantra is "focus on the reader." So if an author is annoyed by my promo tweets, but a reader buys my book, I've done my job. I operate under the assumption that most readers are NOT following hundreds of authors so they're not getting bombarded by promos quite the way that authors are.

Reply

Lacey Wolfe

5/28/2012 02:34:49 am

That is an excellent point Cara. I never stopped to think of it that way. And your right. :)